Paradise Garden eBook

of the masculine fare I provided. He had shed
a few tears at Miss Redwood’s departure and
I liked him for them, for they showed his loyalty,
but he had no more games of the nursery nor the mawkish
sentimentality that I found upon the nursery shelves.
I had other plans for Jerry. John Benham should
have his wish. I would make Jerry as nearly the
Perfect Man as mortal man could make God’s handiwork.
Spiritually he should grow “from within,”
directed by me, but guided by his own inner light.
Physically he should grow as every well-made boy should
grow, sturdy in muscle and bone, straight of limb,
deep of chest, sound of mind and strong of heart.
I would make Jerry a Greek.

Perhaps these plans may seem strange coming from one
who had almost grown old before he had been young.
But I had made sure that Jerry should profit by my
mistakes, growing slowly, built like the Benham Wall,
of material that should endure the sophistries of the
world and remain unbroken.

I worked Jerry hard that first winter and spring,
and his physical condition showed that I had no need
to fear for his health. And when the autumn came
I decided to bring him face to face with nature when
she is most difficult. I was a good woodsman,
having been born and bred in the northern part of
the state, and until I went to the University had
spent a part of each year in the wilderness. We
left Horsham Manor one October day, traveling light,
and made for the woods. We were warmly clad,
but packed no more than would be essential for existence.
A rifle, a shotgun, an ax, and hunting knives were
all that we carried besides tea, flour, a side of
bacon, the ammunition and implements for cooking.
By night we had built a rough shack and laid our plans
for a permanent cabin of spruce logs, which we proposed
to erect before the snow flew. Game was abundant,
and before our bacon was gone our larder was replenished.
I had told Radford of our plans and the gamekeepers
were instructed to give us a wide berth. Jerry
learned to shoot that year, not for fun, but for existence,
for one evening when we came in with an empty game
bag we both went to our blankets hungry. The
cabin rose slowly, and the boy learned to do his share
of work with the ax. He was naturally clever with
his hands, and there was no end to his eagerness.
He was living in a new world, where each new day brought
some new problem to solve, some difficulty to be surmounted.
He had already put aside childish things and had entered
early upon a man’s heritage. There are persons
who will say that I took great risks in thus exposing
Jerry while only in his eleventh year, but I can answer
by the results achieved. We lived in the woods
from the fifteenth of October until a few days before
Christmas. During that time we had built a cabin,
ten feet by twelve, with a stone fireplace and a roof
of clay; had laid a line of deadfalls, and rabbit
snares; had made a pair of snowshoes and a number of
vessels of birch bark, and except for the tea and
flour had been self-supporting, items compensated
for by the value of our labors.